I'm working on a xamarin forms (PCL) project (A basic customer care chat app which is meant to run on Android and iOS only) that has just two xaml pages, custom renderers and few dependencies. This project is meant to be implemented into another existing project (which I don't have access to its source code) such that an action would be binded to a button on the existing app to show a page on my own project.
There is need for me to share my chat project with my client's developer but without exposing my source codes, perhaps compiling to dll or nuget package that would be added to the existing project to access my project's functions and pages. I have searched through the xamarin forum and here on stackoverflow but can't seem to lay my hands on a solution.
Is this possible at all? If yes, what am I missing? If no, is there any better option to use?
Please do note that the chat app completely done, so I'm hoping perhaps there's a way I could directly convert the project to a Nuget package.
Thanks in anticipation!
If the host application is a Xamarin Forms one:
-Move your cross platform shared code into a PCL or .Net Standard (ContentPages, ContentViews, Classes).
-Move your Renderers and platform specific code to Android and iOs Class Libraries.
Your client will have to reference your first assembly (dll) in their XF assembly in order to instantiate/manipulate your views/classes and platform specifics one on their Back-end side (taking into account your renderers, effects, etc ...)
A lot of Xamarin Controls Libraries Open Source hosted on Github are working like that. For example this one: https://github.com/jamesmontemagno/Xamarin.Forms-PullToRefreshLayout
If the host application is a native application, take a look into Xamarin forms embedding
Finally, I seem to solve the problem by enabling visual studio to build Nuget packages for the chat app project (summing up to 3 nuget packages) on project build.
Thanks #Rudy Spano and #Micah Switzer for your contributions
Related
I just created a simple custom control in my xamarin.forms project and want to use the same control as a nuget package in my other projects. After creating the .nupkg file I tested it by adding as a local package in another xamarin forms project.The issue is the package I created is installed,but the contents inside it are not available.. Can anyone help me on resolving this..
You have to tell visual studio to pack the content of a library and generate a nuget package. This will then include the dll in the package and allow you to access it from other projects.
You can see how to do this in Visual Studio here
Including Xaml files is trickier, but if you can do the UI in code it easier enough. I created Xamarin.Forms control library on github that might be a good place to start.
I am complete newbie to the windows phone development and just starting to write a module that i hope to deploy as library project that could be referenced from with in a windows mobile application and could access the UI components etc. I have been looking to find a way to do that but no luck so far. Basically what i am looking for is an alternate of a an android library project or a jar file for windows phone apps. I'd really appreciate an informed opinion about it.
In order to create a library project, when creating the new project select the Windows Phone Library project template:
Can I use my own DLLs with a Xamarin iOS or Android project?
The reason I'm asking is because I want to compile dlls from Clojure CLR, and use them with my Xamarin mobile projects.
Currently the answer for this is 'No' - you cannot use your own existing assemblies but must instead recompile those projects as Xamarin.iOS or Xamarin.Android (MonoTouch or MonoDroid) libraries.
This is because the Xamarin twins are based on old Silverlight profile code and not on full .Net.
This situation is changing currently - Xamarin is rebasing on Mono3/.Net4.5 and Xamarin is working towards PCL support.
However, even with these recent changes I think it is still advisable to rebuild your assemblies for the specific platforms at this time.
When sharing code between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, the two core options for developers are 1) Windows Runtime Components and 2) Portal Class Libraries.
Windows Runtime Components use WinRT and can be projected into all the supported languages. They require linked files in separate projects (binaries) when used on different platforms. They, however, share 90% of the available WinRT APIs.
Portable Class Libraries are a subset (sometimes a significant subset) of the BCL that has binary compatibility across platforms. They can be used on WinRT applications but also on other project types like Silverlight, Xbox, etc.
When a developer is choosing a "sharing strategy" which project type is the go-to technique to do the best job sharing code between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8? Thanks.
It depends what form of sharing you need:
1) If you have a common C++ business logic layer you can use Windows Runtime (WinRT) components to expose this to both Windows Phone and Windows Store app (that's the only use-case for Windows Phone as you can't write a WP8 app using JavaScript or use .NET to author a WinRT component).
You'd have to build two separate WinRT components however, one for Phone and one for Windows Store. It should be possible to share the C++/CX code of your WinRT interop layer using preprocessor directives (#if) to mark the platform specific code.
2) You have business logic in C#/VB that only has dependencies on the .NET APIs which are available in a Portable Class Library. Then you can use Portable Class Library (PCL) to contain that logic. Basically if you can build your library into a PCL DLL then this should work. You can then reference this PCL in binary form in both Windows Phone and Windows Store app.
However as Martin has said you need to take care when using 3rd party libraries as these will also need to be built for PCL. Some 3rd party libraries are already available in PCL form (JSON.NET for example).
3) You want to share code for that has platform API dependencies (or 3rd party library dependencies) which are not supported by PCL. Then you'd need to create separate DLL libraries, one per platform. You can avoid code duplication using linked C#/VB source files and use a build flag (#if again) to allow small code changes between your target platforms.
If you want to share code between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, then you cannot use Windows Runtime Components, because there are different components used for Windows 8 and different for Windows Phone 8 and they are not interchangeable.
I would go for either Portable Class Libraries for some simple generic libraries, or for code sharing via links and #if WP8 compilation directives - this just works and is more powerful than Portable libs.
Keep also in mind that most external libraries like MVVM Light cannot be referenced in Portable Libs, so if you want to use them, you have to use the code sharing via file references.
For some guidance on how to effectively use Portable Class Libraries to share code between platforms, see this blog post: How to Make Portable Class Libraries Work for You
This question is no longer relevant with the introduction of Windows
Phone 8.1 Universal Apps in Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 which supports
Shared Projects.
Wait a moment, as for me even in Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 this question is still relevant because there are two types of projects there:
Class Library (Portable for Universal Apps) - PCL
and
Windows Runtime Component (Portable for Universal Apps) - WinMD
I can see only one big difference between them:
WinMD uses only WinRT and PCL could be used also with .Net and Silverlight. But I also want to know more about which one and when better to choose.
I need to compile my web site, is it possible without converting to a web project first?
I think he wants to "protect" his code for any deployment.
If this is a .Net project you can try hide some code using codebehind components in ASP.NET.
Here is an small tutorial about it:
http://asp.net-tutorials.com/basics/code-behind/
For older projects you may have to build a cgi binary application, but as already mentioned here, add some more details to specify your problem.
I think you want a VS Web Deployment project. This exists as a separate project in your solution but can compile and copy the existing web project to a different directory.
There's a reasonable write-up of it on this blog with step-by-step instructions. You'll need to download and install the new project type separately though (2008, 2010)